Every year, $9 million in Washington Lottery winnings go unclaimed.
Case in point: Someone bought a Mega Millions ticket earlier this month at a 7-Eleven on North 36th Street in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood but has yet to collect the $250,000 in prize money that goes with it.
Right now there's about $400,000 in prize money that can still be claimed before the deadlines imposed by the state are reached. A winner has 180 days from the date of a drawing to collect winnings.
A prize of $100,000 remains unclaimed from a Hit 5 game drawing May 1. The ticket was purchased at an Albertson's in Marysville.
Many of the unclaimed prizes are from the Lottery's Match 4 game, where contestants choose four numbers from 1 to 24 and the computer draws the winning numbers.
According to the state, Match 4 gives players better odds of winning $10,000 than any of the state's other lottery games. Of the 13 unexpired unclaimed prizes this year, 11 are from the Match 4 game.
The largest unclaimed jackpot was in 1993, when no one produced a winning $6 million Lotto ticket. Since then, the only other one that came even marginally close was a $1.2 million Lotto prize in April 2005.
From the time Washington's Lottery sold its first ticket in 1982 through June 30 this year, it has awarded $5.9 billion in winnings.
Under state law, a portion of the money brought in by the lottery goes to an economic-development fund, another portion goes to the general fund, and the rest goes into Lottery funds to be used as prize money.
Legislation creating Washington's Lottery was approved by the House on June 30, 1982, during a special session to deal with a projected $253 million budget deficit.
By the way, if you're holding that Mega Millions winning ticket, you have until Feb. 16 to claim your prize.
i wish it was me. i go past that 7/11 a lot but it is not me. my wife wishes it was me too. lol.
Yet another reason to extend claim period to 365 days ... as most states have provided.
When a retailer wins their "partnership monies" from a jackpot win, it would be so easy for them to get a big colored piece of construction paper and write on it that there is an unclaimed winning ticket that was purchased at their store on such and such date and won on such and such date. Also, it would be good if all churches, newspapers, and radio stations received this feed/information and would run them monthly as a FREE 10-second psa announcement for their community's members. That's free and community members would spread the good news. I suspect that many of these unclaimed "winners" are residents of the nearby radius of the retailer where the ticket was purchased and if 50% came forward what a joyful result. Who knows, maybe such neighborly care would be rewarded by these newly "in" the money community members via their remaining a resident and also stepping up their purchases from the local entrepreneurs who desperately need their support.
If nobody claimed in 180 days I doubt 365 would make any difference. My guess is most of them didn't survive washing machine.
I better tell my family in Seattle, I was their in May but it was late May so I don't have the Hit Five ticket....darn....
It'd survive my washing machine just fine. I bought one of them new water saver washers and the clothes barely even get wet. Doesn't hardly rinse the soap out of em either. So the ticket would probably be dry and in perfect shape if it went through my washer. That's one thing I don't have to worry about. My clothes may be dirty but at least they smell like Tide.
Tide is good for killing moss. More people would collect their winnings in WA. if they gave tide away.
DD
I'll give that a shot.
It's either that or figure out how to mow the back wall of my cabin.
if the agents there are a s lazy as i saw the NYC agents, they prob have tried to claim them and been told that it was a loser.then binned, not even scanned.